an anamcara exploring those close encounters of the liminal kind

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At the end of my garden in Capel Curig in north Wales, where it meets a rather distinctive, mysterious and therefore much-valued copse, there are a small number of gorse bushes growing wild. I love them.

I could tell you, as I looked at them, that their botanical name is Ulex europaeus, but that’s rather an academic and clinical view of them. Not very interesting. But, there’s so much more about them.

‘Everybody loves to tell me I was born an old soul
Better keep my eyes wide open’

Sabrina Carpenter, singer

I could tell you, and it is so true, that they are wonderful to look at, and when they flower between January to June their flowers are a most vivid, breath-taking and brilliant yellow. It is an also an important shrub as it provides shelter and food for many spiders, other insects, and birds such as Dartford Warblers, Stonechats and Yellowhammers. But, there’s more. Even more. There is always more. Mae mwy as they say in Wales

What if our perception is stunted? Our understanding limited?

What if our perception of other people, of nature and the cosmos, what if the view we hold even about ourselves is arrested, partial and limited by our twenty-first century thought? Like looking into a dirty, in-need-of-a-polish mirror. We do, after all, live in a society which idolises science, and which is very much the offspring of ancient Greece with its dualistic view of the world.

What if we’re blind to what is really out there?

Composition

Once, as I gazed at those gorse bushes after a rain storm they bristled with light, the reflected light of the sun in thousands of water droplets on their spiny leaves and stems, caught in their flowers and on a myriad of spider’s webs that had ‘colonised’ them. As I half-closed my eyes and let my imagination flow I could see the shrubs, the water, the lights were Life itself. And what’s more it wasn’t only the shrubs the exuded such Light-lIfe. It was everything.

‘…there is another way to conceive…life…not [as] a clockwork universe in which individuals function as discrete springs and gears, but [as] one that looks far more like a luminous web, in which the whole is far more than the parts.’ Barbara Brown Taylor, The Luminous Web.

In our mind’s eye, in our imaginations – which are no less real (and maybe more so) than the physical world we see with our two eyes – Life is not separate parts that are autonomous but are facets of the One, that Life Web. Each seeming part, an observable node, is invisibly connected to that one Luminous web, but for now we might only be able to glimpse it periodically using our mind’s eye. It is enough.

The universe, then, shines and shimmers with an ancient light that is, currently, too fantastic to behold. And what of you and I? Oh, yes, as people who are connected to that Life-Web, we too shine. ‘I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being’, said Hafiz, and ‘Let your light so shine…’, said The Christ (Matthew 5:16a, The Book). Ofcourse, there are those who will find it hard to believe, and those who will fight against such a notion, but I do believe it is true.

There is always more. Mae mwy as they say in Wales. Our composition, our outlook, our very status are all wonderfully, graciously entwined and part of that Luminous web of Life.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship…’ (C S Lewis)

No Limitations

That Web stretches outward and is more luminous and expansive than we can yet imagine, touching everything in the universe. Why, that Web connects you, as you sit in front of your computer or iPhone reading this, with, say, the Crab Nebula, some 6500 light years away. Send out a ray of light to the Crab Nebula today and it will arrive in AD 6718. But, I would venture that that connectedness takes no travelling time should you ‘jangle’ the web of which you’re part (by sending a good-thought, a prayer, light and love in that direction, or elsewhere). Physical limitations don’t apply. The web in the Crab Nebula instantly responds. It can do no other.

There’s a wonderful book by one of my favourite ‘old’ Brit authors, John Wyndham. Amongst his great books, he was renowned for writing ‘The Day of the Triffids’. But he also wrote a book called ‘Chocky’, a delightful book that has twists and turns that causes challenges along the way. Matthew is the main character in that book and he gets into awful trouble at school for being different and acting oddly. His drawings and paintings in art classes, for instance, have odd colours for the sky and sea. Perhaps, purple instead of blue, and orange instead of green-blue water. And why do the buildings he paints seem odd and compressed? Matthew is getting his ideas from beyond, from someone else in another part of the universe – it is a sci-fi book, and a very good one at that. And this is what happens in his physics class:

‘It arose…from Mr Caffer’s assertion during a physics lesson about the speed of light was the limit; nothing, he dogmatically stated, could travel faster than light.

Matthew, put up his hand. Mr Caffer looked at him.

‘Oh’, Mr Caffer said, ‘I might have expected it. Well, young Matthew Gore, what is it you know that Einstein didn’t?’

‘Well, sir. It’s just that the speed of light is only the limit of physical speed’, said Matthew.

‘Indeed. And perhaps you can tell us what travels faster?’

‘Thought, sir,’ said Matthew.

In sending a good-thought, a prayer, energy, light and love in any direction, you and I, as we’re part of that shimmering, Luminous Web, do so instantly. There is no time, no time delay involved. It’s instantaneous. Quantum physics, too, now seems to be hinting at this.

The physics that we’re so used to – and it does perform a good task when driving, shopping, mending the toaster etc – do not apply at the very deepest, spiritual, cosmic, energetic, intimate and ‘magical’ level of the Universe, of which we’re part.

Limitations do not apply, and you are not what you (probably) thought you were!

And finally…

You, too, shine with a myriad points of ancient and cosmic lights, and one day ‘when we’re there’, we will see each other as we really are, and know each other even as we are known, as it says in ancient sacred text. Meanwhile, so look deeper, more intently, intentionally, with your mind’s eye. An amazing world awakes for those keeping their (spiritual) eyes wide open. There is always more. Mae mwy as they say in Wales

‘There is a radiance in all things that is indestructible and almost unperceivable.’ Mark Nepo